Awesome that Frozen [s]Endzone[/s] Cortex is now Gold and on Steam! I'm getting back into it....

But where is by far my favorite game mode, Handball? I see "Full Match" which is interesting and "Duplicate" which, being like the original mode other than Handball, isn't. So which mode is Handball? For the record, I want no turn limit, no 2- or 3-point zones, and the first person to get a touchdown to win. How do I do that?

People weren't happy about the first score ending the game, and it did also sometimes drag without a turn limit.

To get to that in custom rules:

- turn off "has turn limit"
- turn on "has play limit"

That should be all you need to do - the play limit defaults to 1.

To remove bonus zones, which is trickier, you'd need to set up a custom field which doesn't generate them. I understand if that's a bit trickier - a hackier method would be to "Save Rules File" on your changes, then load it up in a text editor and find the line which says

CMOPointsZonePoints 2

And change it to

CMOPointsZonePoints 0

And I'm sorry I didn't keep it in as a preset - you're actually the first person I've seen complain about it. I can look into adding it back in. I'm not sure how well balanced it would be with the new map gen though.

Thank you for such an incredible response. That's why Mode 7 is the most player-friendly developer! Can you guys please take over EA and Ubisoft?

Yes, you're right; there are two issues with the old Handball mode:

1. Too short. Having the first score end the game should be easy to resolve by making it best two out of three. Swapping sides after each point would be great, like the current modes.

2. Too long. The larger issue would is if games last long or, which you could easily predict happening if the map has a small number of choke points, if the game turns into a literal stalemate. I'm not sure what the best solution to this would be...it clearly would not be great to have to rewrite the map generator. I would be satisfied with a high (25-50) turn limit and a winner determined by some statistic, like percentage of time or number of plays on offense or something. (Though either of those statistic could be gamed, so maybe not them.)

That said, the current game modes are fine, but they don't have the epic back-and-fourth nature like Handball did. Even exciting, tactically close games now where neither team is able to score a touchdown and only the 2-point spaces are collected are disappointing when they just stop at 12 turns.